The past year turned out to be very productive for the "Archstroydesign" workshop: the team of architects under the leadership of Alexey Ivanov received several orders at once for the development of general plans for large-scale residential settlements. And although the projected areas differ in area, landscape and geography, the architect sees a lot in common in these works. “The most in demand right now is rational design, which organically links a tough economy and the desire to create a thoughtful and comfortable living environment,” he says. Alexey Ivanov told Archi.ru about how these principles developed in each specific project.
Settlement "Ekodolye", Samara region, 329 hectares
- This project had a very tight budget, so much so that at first it seemed to us that any "excesses" could be given up at once. Here we are not talking about "liberties" in the form of sprawling parks or the creation of a wide "fork" over the areas of land and households. However, having carefully analyzed the features of the site and beat them, we were still able to design a sufficient number of recreational areas and public spaces for the future village.
The plot is almost a complete oval in plan, only its north-western border is more winding. It is cut diagonally by a ravine with a stream flowing into the Sok River, and along the outer radius it bends around the highway. This prompted us the basic planning idea: we run an arc of the road through the territory of the village, which connects two exits to the highway. This arc crosses the stream in the conditional center of all territories, dividing it into four segments that are almost equal in area, which, on the one hand, predetermined the sequence of the project implementation, and on the other hand, allowed the introduction of a self-sufficient green-blue axis into the fabric of the village, completely freed from transport - boulevards launched along comfortable embankments. The main arc of the road predetermined the drawing of all the secondary roads: we do not use a rigid orthogonal grid here, preferring smooth arcs and semi-oval. The advantages of such a plan can hardly be overestimated: the perspectives within the village are constantly changing, as if in a kaleidoscope, and in fact every household can boast of its own unique view of the immediate surroundings and landscapes spread out behind the buildings.
It is also important that such a layout allowed us to turn absolutely all plots away from the main road - all houses here face one of the secondary access roads, while the main transit road is isolated from the cottages by strips of green spaces, which guarantees future residents peace and privacy. It was possible to harmoniously balance different types of development here: public functions and logistics complexes are located along the highway, followed by sectional middle-rise housing, and then townhouses and houses. Community centers are located at all the main "nodes" of the village, plus more dense buildings. Recreational and social centers, on the other hand, are scattered throughout the village so that each district has its own public space.
Settlement "Ekodolie Sholokhovo", Moscow region, 102 hectares
- This village is located just 15 km from Moscow along Dmitrovskoe highway. Already by the name, you can guess that this is the same customer as in the previous case, so it is not surprising that the project was based on similar principles. The general plans even outwardly turned out to be somewhat similar, at least the first impression is exactly that, thanks to the arcs of the main intra-village roads. They perfectly fit the existing relief - there was not even a need to invent anything. And here, too, there is a river, the soft bend of which we contrast with the arc of the main road. True, in this case, on the contrary, they look at each other, so that the central part of the village in the plan resembles a conventionally depicted fish.
The "fish" also has a tail - the site splits into two unequal parts, the smaller of which is adjacent to the highway and has a diamond shape in plan. Here we organize an entrance group with all the necessary public and commercial functions, and on the same territory we concentrate the entire social infrastructure: a kindergarten, sports grounds and facilities, a school, a community center, as well as sectional buildings of a middle storey.
The same part of the site, which is directly adjacent to the river, is quite predictably set aside for individual residential construction. True, here we also slightly violated the canons, placing not cottages, but townhouses along the forest - this was done to attract a more massive buyer. On the main arc of the road in this part of the village, we plant several round squares - these are roundabouts and places for landmarks that will make each part of the village recognizable. Small green squares that will give the settlement an intimacy and coziness. The river with its ravines has become a place for recreation, as well as a natural element of zoning and division of the project on the stage of implementation.
Village "Dream", Moscow region, 222 hectares
- This cottage community is being built between Dmitrovskoye and Leningradskoye highways, 23 kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road. Perhaps its main feature is that it has the widest possible range of housing objects - there are compact and two-level apartments, townhouses and duplexes, cottages of various sizes. This was the main wish of the customer, intending to bring to the market the most multi-format product, therefore one of our main tasks was the development of a master plan that would allow various buildings to coexist peacefully.
In plan, the site has the shape of a complex polygon, which has only one "long" side - it is to this side that it adjoins the highway. The idea of the main axis-arc, which would form something like a protractor, together with the track, suggested itself here, but this time we are stringing separate residential clusters on it. The border between them is a green zone - a small park connecting the road and the forest, on the border of which this village is being built. We launch a boulevard along this park, the route of which is deliberately winding - connecting various public spaces and centers, it offers a non-trivial walking route, which seemed to us much more interesting than the traditional direct lumbago into the forest. Plus, each cluster gets its own community center, pedestrian square, and cultural site.
While working on this project, I often recalled the words of Francesco Milizia: "The city plan should be arranged in such a way that the splendor of the whole is subdivided into endless private beauties, all so different that you will never see the same thing repeated." Let not a city, but a rather large settlement we, in my opinion, managed to make in accordance with these principles. In particular, we paid a lot of attention to the design of residential quarters - in total, about 12 types were developed, which guarantees the visual diversity of Dream.
Okhotino, Yaroslavl region, 80 hectares
- This village is located 145 km from Moscow, on the banks of the Nerl River, surrounded by almost untouched deciduous-coniferous forests. For us, this project became an acquaintance with the new format of a suburban settlement, because although there are plots for individual housing construction here, the residential function is not dominant. All housing here is initially built "for rent", so it is rather a recreational-type settlement - we had to focus on the entertainment and sports infrastructure, offering the widest possible range of it.
After analyzing similar Western projects, we came to the conclusion that the actual sports resorts are not so much in demand today - the inhabitants of modern megacities are so tired of the noise, rush and information flow that they are primarily looking for opportunities for relaxation. The nature surrounding the village also disposes of this, so we paid special attention to the design of walking and horse trails, places for meditation and outdoor recreation, as well as agritourism facilities. The difficulty we had to face was that by the time we entered the project, glades for roads had already been cut in the territory of the future village. In fact, we worked with a ready-made grid of roads, and it cannot be called ideal. We believe that our main achievement in this situation is that we managed to unload the coastal zone as much as possible - in fact, only a recreation area is located along the river, and we are talking not only about a water protection territory, but about a much wider "belt" that turns the coastal zone into a kind of reserve, into which you can get in touch with the greatness of nature, but it is forbidden to be in charge. The project is not the most successful, because it was not possible to show the Customer the peculiarity of the layout that distinguishes private housing from resort housing. In the latter case, you need to be closer to Disneyland, to a fairy tale. But it turned out boring.
"Houses of Adagio", Sverdlovsk region, 182 hectares
- Another project that we would like to show today stands somewhat apart. First of all, because of its belonging to a different price segment: "Dom Adagio" is a premium-class village, and this status had to be taken into account and emphasized during its design. It is located in the Sverdlovsk region, on the banks of the Ilyinsky reservoir, 30 km from Yekaterinburg.
First of all, a developed community center was thought out and designed, in fact, it is a whole comfortable quarter on the bank of the reservoir, offering a variety of scenarios for leisure activities, including family-wide. This quarter is slightly isolated from the village, and this is due to the peculiarities of the site, one rather narrow "prominence" of which is completely oriented along the reservoir. We decided that this unique place should be reserved simultaneously for all residents of the village, and that is why we concentrated public functions here.
The houses themselves, whose area varies from 200 to 330 square meters, are located on the main territory of the village, which has a rectangular shape in the plan, "stretching" two wide "sleeves" to the coastline. The fact is that there are already several residential buildings in this part of the coast, and we are actually embracing this development. In general, everything is clear with the layout of the resulting "sleeves": in each of them there are two lines of houses, between which we start a loop of the access road. Each of them really ends with a turning circle, which allowed us to locate several areas in close visual proximity to the water. Plus, each "microdistrict" has its own local public spaces, which in the future may be marked with a fountain or sculpture. The central part of the village is outlined by a circle of the road, so that the households are fanned out around the main landscaped square. The style of the village was chosen by the customer - this is Italy, and we tried to correspond to it, referring to the images of Tuscan architecture so beloved by us.
